Jim awoke abruptly, startled out of unconsciousness filled with nightmare images, into the awareness that he lived; and his body ached and cold metal was digging into his face. Various parts of him were also pressed against hard metal and protested until he shifted one hip. He shut his eyes again, remembering that the images were not all nightmare and shadow.

He had slept, obviously, on the deck of Cargo Bay 2. It was inevitable really. Even he could only push his body so far. Spock had insisted he eat and drink and, as sleep cleared from his brain, he seemed to have a vague memory of warm fingers landing lightly on his brow and then nothing.

It seemed his sorcerous First Mate had mind melded him into sleep. Jim rolled over on his back and blinked up into the dim lights on the ceiling. He thought about being angry with Spock for knocking him out. Metal floors were not conducive to restful sleep, especially not after the hours of crawling and climbing. His muscles ached and his knees and shoulders were complaining bitterly.

"Feeling better?"

Spock's voice chased the last of the sleep from his head. He sat up and stretched until his spine cracked. His face contorted for a moment as he rubbed the back of his neck and turned his head right and left.

"Better than what?" he asked, rhetorically.

"Than before you slept," Spock supplied.

"Not really," Jim said, drily. He shifted so he was looking at Spock, "Any luck?"

Spock, dusty and disheveled, still wearing a uniform shirt covered in the blood of his shipmates, was in the exact same position Jim recalled him being in before he fell asleep. He was seated cross legged on the floor surrounded by tools and diagnostics. He looked at Jim and lifted an eyebrow.

"Luck?" he asked, "No, only careful analytical and scientific investigation, combined with Vulcan hearing."

Jim stretched again to hide his smile.

"Tell me," he demanded, moving over closer to the Vulcan.

The key, they had discovered, was in the language that Uhura and M'Ress uncovered. The device - the Time Shaper - was 'programmed' using a series of tones set in a particular frequency. The problem now was finding the exact set of tones to return to the moments just after they initially were pulled forward.

"I am still working on coordinating sounds and frequencies into the time increments used by the invaders, but I believe I am nearly done."

"That's what I remember from before you tricked me into sleeping," Jim stated bluntly. "Again!"

The Vulcan returned him only a guileless look. "Jim, we are neither one of us indestructible ourselves. We've been doing this for quite some time."

They had - for hours that had felt like days, in which Kirk had fought his worst enemy. Himself. He found he would much rather have charged after the invaders with guns blazing, crawled through the ducts with Sulu and Chekhov using grenades, even faced them armed only with knives.

Math and Science were Spock's department. Language was Uhura's. At one point, weary beyond exhaustion, he had asked rhetorically, "Where's Uhura when I need her?"

Spock, whose soul was more poetic and romantic than he would ever admit, had looked at him with great intensity, lifted his tricorder and replied, "Here. She is here. All the work she did translating this language is with us and we would have far more to do if she had not gotten this far."

Mollified, shoring up his determination, Kirk had forged on with the translations. He had worked until Spock had apparently decided the Captain had made one mistake too many and put him to sleep.

"Well what can I do now?" he asked.

"Now," Spock answered, "we need to coordinate their time increments to ours and find the combination that will return us to the exact moment we need."

"And you of course know the exact moment we need," Jim mused.

"Of course." It was stated in a matter-of-fact way.

Jim glanced at the small computer screen Spock was working from and got an instant headache from the equations marching across it. Some of it appeared to be in Vulcan, which Spock always insisted was a more logical and precise mathematical system. When Jim had challenged him, claiming that math was surely the only true Universal language and even Humans couldn't have screwed it up that badly, his only reply had been an ironically arched set of eyebrows and a quiet amusement that lay deep in dark eyes.

"All right, then show me," Jim said, grimly determined to grasp this and participate. It was only time afterall, a simple one to one ratio.

And Spock showed him. He also showed him the rod that slid from the bottom of the cylinder and was used to change the settings. Fortunately, it appeared to be fairly straight forward. The 'gods" who had created this gift had intended it to be "user friendly." It seemed to solidify Spock's belief that it was a technology from an advanced race given to a less advanced race, for some undetermined reason.

There was certainly other evidence for advanced races being taken for gods. Ever since their meeting with the Being who called himself Apollo, more and more evidence had arisen of such things being possible. It explained Daphne's native planet of Thrace and its tales of humans being brought there by gods and its strong similarities to Earth's ancient Greece. Their empathic abilities were said to be a gift from the gods.

Jim knew that Spock was being eaten alive by curiosity about the aliens and their "gods." But he was far more driven by his need to save his ship, his friends and his wife. Spock had proven more than once that he would risk his own life and limbs in the pursuit of knowledge, but not anyone else's.

He also knew his Science Officer had a piece of gragonoth hide and forensic evidence he could carry easily; plus all the data stored in his tricorder. Once they changed the time line, Spock would have a puzzle difficult enough to keep him busy for a while. The Enterprise had just a disasterous first contact with an alien race. He hoped htat Spock and he might be able to prevent something similar from happening again in the future. He just hoped the obsessive Vulcan didn't want to hunt down a real, live gragonoth as part of his investigation.

At last Spock keyed a sequence into the metal rod, making it glow with an odd orange/yellow light. They exchanged a curious glance but as neither had any idea what that meant, they shrugged it off. They were committed.

"All in, Captain?" Spock asked.

Jim nodded. He'd taught Spock that phrase when he had taught him to play poker - which he had discovered was a really bad idea. It was not wise to play a game like that against an opponent with the math skills and memory, not to mention the ability to control every muscle in his face and twinkle in his eye, of the Vulcan.

"All in, Spock," he said, putting utter faith and trust in the Spock's abilities. "Let's see where we go."

Spock pushed the rod all the way into the cylinder. As before, it gave them little warning. The ship seemed to lurge back and forth without moving them at all. The lights danced and flickered.

Then the light vanished, leaving them in a silent shroud of mist.